


bang bang

by allp_wips



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-05-14 11:22:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allp_wips/pseuds/allp_wips
Summary: Alex, having recently inherited a fledgling mob enterprise from her deceased father, doesn’t plan to end up in bed with a shady woman that she meets at an even shadier bar. Astra, an alien ex-con trying to build a new life on Earth, doesn’t plan on getting into a relationship with someone who seems destined to go down the same self-destined path to hell paved with good intentions, that she had once gone down.They just might be able to help each other out of their own personal hells, though.





	bang bang

The arms of the bartender catch Alex’s attention first. They’re strong, and corded with muscle, in a tank top that doesn’t leave much to the imagination. They’d have gotten her attention eventually all by themselves, but it’s the tattoo in faded black and white on her right arm, an irregular pentangle, that draws her eyes first. Something about it is strange, and sets Alex on edge. She has the weirdest feeling that she’s seen something like it, a long time ago.

 

At first, she thinks it must be a prison tattoo that had jogged some forgotten part of her memory, but she can’t pinpoint one, no matter how hard she racks her brain. Not a symbol of affiliation to any local gang, either, or her guys outside would have taken care of it long before Alex had to deal with it.

 

Just an affectation then, Alex decides, relaxing on the bar stool. It’s the job that’s making her antsy again, making her see threats that aren’t even there.

 

With significantly more ease, she sneaks more glances at the bartender, when she comes back Alex’s way again with the drink she’d ordered. She really is eye-catching, in a way that Alex - distracted by the tattoo - hadn’t noticed at first, even in the beat up tank, and even with her hair half coming undone from its ponytail, in unruly waves of brown and shock-white.

 

“You’re new,” Alex says, frowning down into the glass that she sets under her nose. “Where’s M’gann?”

 

“Just filling in,” comes the curt answer. “M’gann had to go out of town to see some cousins.”

 

Alex frowns. Around here, there’s no way that means what it’s supposed to mean.

 

“Who’d she get in trouble with so bad that she had to skip town?” she asks, protective instinct rising.

 

She’s never been close to M’gann, but she does run the only bar in town that Alex can still stomach to set foot in. And well, if Alex has got to run the godforsaken business her father had foisted on her, she might as well use her connections to protect the people she wants to.

 

“Don’t you worry about it,” is the evasive answer she gets, though, and the bartender moves away to another patron before Alex can push the issue.

 

\---

 

A stone cold brushoff like that isn’t something Alex usually pursues. But she’s back at the same bar the next day, and the same woman takes her order.

 

She means to order something strong, but somehow Alex just ends up ordering a club soda instead, accompanied by a proper dinner for once, from a rickety menu card that’s seen better days. She digs into the burger and fries with a slowness born of exhaustion from the day’s work, trying not to take in how the ketchup looks like blood, in the weak lighting of the bar. 

 

Weird, the ways in which the job gets to you.

 

“Another one,” she mumbles, some time later, holding her finger up for a refill when the bartender comes her way again.

 

“No. You’re done for the night.”

 

Alex looks up at the refusal.

 

“It’s just club soda!”

 

Unimpressed by her tone, which anyone else would have interpreted as dangerous, the bartender tilts her head at the clock, which reads way past 2am. Shit. The job must have gone much longer than Alex had thought it did.

 

“I need to clean up,” the woman says, briefly.

 

Alex grunts, and gets up. Lucy needs her at the office early in the morning, she knows, so should really be in bed by now. But, somehow she knows that sleep won’t be coming, not tonight. Not after what she’d had to do that day.

 

She doesn’t know how long she waits outside the diner, shivering against an ice cold wall, by the time the back door opens, and the bartender comes out, locking up for the night.

 

She doesn’t start when she sees Alex, not even a little. In retrospect, that really should have tipped Alex off. 

 

“You’re still here,” the bartender observes.

 

Alex shrugs. “Don’t have anywhere to be getting to in a hurry.”

 

The other woman’s gaze travels from her frozen form, to the motorbike that’s currently propped against the wall.

“It’s mine,” Alex says, unable to keep the triumph out of her voice, because that Ducati is her pride and joy. 

 

“It’s unsafe,” is all the woman says, looking unimpressed.

 

Alex frowns. She opens her mouth to give her a piece of her mind, and-

 

“Wanna go for a ride?” she blurts out.

 

She’s mortified as soon as the question escapes her mouth. The yearning for a time machine to go back and erase the question is strong, but the bartender’s reply shocks her. 

 

The stoic woman colours up, and looks from side to side, as if wondering whether Alex really is talking to her, before straightening up and stepping forward.

 

“Yes,” she says, looking at Alex with such a strange yearning that Alex wonders what question she’s really answering.

 

\---

 

They go for a very short ride, to Alex’s temporary apartment near the dockside.

 

“What’s your name?” Alex murmurs, when she’s pressed against the door to her apartment, hemmed in by the woman’s elbows on either side, and stuck in place against a strong body.

 

“Astra.”

 

Alex tries the name against her mouth later, when they make it to her bed. Then she tries it against her neck, her breasts, down every inch of her body, until it’s her name that Astra is moaning out into the night air. 

 

When she climbs back up her body, Astra gathers Alex close to her, and presses their mouths together with a quiet desperation, whispering things against her lips that Alex doesn’t understand. 

 

\---

 

The next day, Alex wakes up blinking into a bright late morning sun.

 

“Shit!” She lunges for the phone by her bedside table, except there’s no table there, because she’s not in her own bed.

 

“Oh.” The events of the previous night come back to her, and Alex looks around slowly, realizing that the other side of the bed is empty.

 

“It’s on the floor,” speaks a voice from the doorway.

 

Alex looks up to see Astra already dressed, in a black sweater and slacks, a far cry from the dirty tank top she’d worn at the bar.

 

“You dropped it last night, on your way to the bed.”

 

Alex stares, remembers that she’s staring, and tears her gaze away from Astra to grapple the phone out from between the various items of clothing shedded on the floor.

 

Seven missed calls, and fifteen increasingly irate texts from Lucy, ending in  _ GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW. _

 

“Ugh.” Alex scrubs her face with her free hand.

 

“Ugh?” Astra echoes.

 

“Just work.” Without making the mistake of looking at Astra again, Alex starts gathering her clothes together, haphazardly putting them on. “I have to... work. Yeah.”

 

When she’s fully clothed, she dares to look at Astra again.

 

“I have to go.”

 

It’s like a door closes over Astra’s eyes, at those words.

 

“Alright,” she says, and steps aside, inclining her head towards the door.

 

Feeling more sheepish than she ought to - really, they’re both adults and this is something adults do, she has nothing to feel guilty about - Alex eases past her, heading straight for the way. With her fingers on the handle, though, she can’t help but look back once more at Astra, who hasn’t moved from the bedroom doorway.

 

“Um...”

 

Astra raises her eyebrows, and turns to face Alex, as it to indicate that she’s listening.

 

Alex shakes her head. Stupid. There’s no way this will work out.

 

“Nevermind,” she mumbles, and slips out the door, calling her driver before she’s made it to the elevator, and calling James to take her Ducati away.

 

\---

 

Halfway to the location that Lucy had texted her, Alex realizes that Astra had tucked away a piece of paper into her shirt pocket, with a nine digit number on it.  _ Shit.  _ She should toss it out the car window right now. It would be the stupidest idea in the world to keep it.

 

She doesn’t throw it away.

 

Lucy catches Alex halfway up the stairs to her makeshift office.

 

“Where were you? You were supposed to get here by seven!”

 

“Got waylaid,” Alex says, briefly.

 

“What could possibly have been so important?” Lucy demands.

 

Alex looks at her, and something in her eyes must have pleaded with Lucy to not push it, because Lucy just rolls her eyes.

 

“Never mind, just get in here,” she says, shoving open the door to the office.

 

The thing with even as crooked a business as what Alex’s father had left to her is, it’s still a business. There’s still paperwork and red tape, tons of it, just in a different way.

 

“Right,” Alex says, making a beeline for the folder sitting front and center on her table. “The Lord Towers inside job. Is this what you wanted me to sign off on?” 

 

Lucy nods distractedly, and then looks up all of a sudden.

 

“Oh,” she says, as if she had just remembered. “Querl took care of wiring Kara’s tuition for the semester over to her, by the way.”

 

“Oh,” Alex looks up, her mind entirely derailed away from what she’d been reading. “Did Kara... did she say anything?”

 

It’s a hopeless question. Her sister isn’t one to come around so easily, Alex knows, not when their fundamentally different principles have set them at such stark odds.

 

“No.” Lucy says, her tone not quite daring to cross the line over to sympathetic. “She just said she’ll be in touch.”

 

“Right.” Alex tries to get her eyes to focus on the report, as if she hadn’t drafted it line by line with Lucy herself, the previous week. She clears her throat. “Tell Brainy I owe him one.”

 

She looks up, when Lucy doesn’t leave.

 

“Is there anything else?”

 

Lucy silently hands over a grainy overhead picture of a figure running around the corner of a nondescript brick and mortar building.

 

“Who’s that?”

 

“Just some random kid. Security sent this to us. We’re going to have to take care of him.” Lucy sighs. “He saw us bury Lockwood.”

 

“Fuck Lockwood,” Alex says.

 

Fuck him for screwing her over like this, even in his death.

 

“It’s a simple job,” Lucy says, though the distaste on her face speaks to the contrary. “We’ve already got a spot marked out. I can send one of the guys in.”

 

“I’ll take care of it,” Alex says, leaning back, catching her reflection mirrored on one of the steel cabinets.

 

“Me or James can just-” Lucy starts.

 

“I’ll take care of it,” Alex repeats, her gaze unaverted.

 

“You got it, boss.” Lucy heads for the door without further appeal.

 

Left to herself, Alex continues frowning at the mirror, undoing the top buttons of her shirt to survey the damage from the previous day. 

 

A few scratches, and one slightly more serious wound. Nothing major. Astra had noticed them the previous night, she knows. She had felt the woman tracing over them, when they’d fallen asleep together, but she hadn’t made any comment about them.

 

She’s never thought little or much of herself, but when she stands under the harsh glare of the makeshift office, Alex finds herself wilting. What had Astra seen in her the previous night, underneath the bruises and cuts and shitty attitude? When she had kissed her, it felt different, like there was something more she saw there, than what Alex sees.

 

She’s palming the burner phone out of her bag before she thinks twice about it. She’d gotten Winn to drum up half a dozen of them for this ‘business trip’. She’s not supposed to use them for anything but emergencies, she’d written the damn rulebook on that, and she’s certainly not supposed to use one of them for this.

 

She spares one glance for the closed door, before unbuttoning her shirt the rest of the way. Her fingers hesitate over the straps of her bra, before she undoes that too, so that she’s naked from the waist up. Another deep breath, and then Alex is holding the camera out in front of her. 

 

Another minute, and the photo is sent. Alex holds it together enough to get dressed again, before collapsing on her chair, trying not to think about what she’s just done.

 

\---

 

The photo comes in as she’s doing her grocery shopping. Astra flips open her phone cursorily, expecting it to be a check-in text from Olivia or M’gann, before cradling it to her chest as soon as she sees what it is, and looking around sharply to see if anyone else had seen. The frozen meals section remains deserted, so Astra risks another look.

 

It’s Alex, indubitably, even though the photo is grainy, and taken from the neck down. Astra stares at it intently, as if to memorize every sharp angle and curve, every healed-over bruise, as if she doesn’t already know every inch of it by heart. There’s a new scratch, though, a small one on her side. Astra fixates on it, hands itching to reach through the screen to touch, to soothe it.

 

“Miss,” a voice interrupts her.

 

Astra glares down at the man who had spoken, clutching the phone to her chest again.

 

“Um, I’m just trying to get by to the salmon fillets?” the shopper tries, looking askance at her.

 

Astra steps back mechanically to let him pass, before stalking over to the opposite end of the department store, to the far corner of the clothing aisle where she won’t be overheard.

 

Replying to the text doesn’t even occur to her. She dials Alex right away. It rings for eight times without reply. Undaunted, Astra ends the call and tries again. On the third repeat performance of this, Alex picks up.

 

Her voice is tense. “Astra, you can’t call me on this phone.”

 

“Why did you send it to me?” Astra asks, without preamble.

 

A long silence, and then-

 

“I don’t know,” Alex says, sounding small. “I just, wanted to.”

 

“That’s not an answer,” Astra begins to argue.

 

“Astra, I have to go,” Alex says. “You cannot be calling me. We can talk about this later.”

 

“Alex, wait.” Astra hears terse breathing on the other side, and rushes forward with what she had really wanted to say. “You’re beautiful. That was... you are so beautiful, Alex.”

 

“I...” Alex’s reply is breathy. “I can’t... I gotta go.”

 

Astra’s mouth opens to argue again, and hasn’t finished shutting up, before she hears the ring tone. She grips the phone in her fist, momentarily considers smashing it against the nearest wall of merchandise in sheer frustration, before taking a deep breath, and trying to continue with her shopping expedition.

 

Stubborn, stubborn woman. 

 

\---

 

Astra is at the end of her list, her fridge stocked up and replacements for her detergent bought, when she happens to pass by the clothing racks again.

 

Normally, this side of the store doesn’t interest her. She’s walked by the lingerie racks a hundred times before, without ever really registering them. She knows what such items of clothing are for, of course. It’s just been years since she’d considered herself in association with such things. That part of her life was supposed to have been over long ago, on a whole other planet.

 

Now, Astra stops and stares, at a particularly eye-catching black lace intricacy. Questing fingers travel up the satin smooth fabric of their own accord, imagining the texture of them against rougher skin.

 

Astra’s mouth quirks up.

 

\---

 

Alex shoots the interloper that security had identified herself. Lucy offers again, but Alex knows how it goes. Some things it’s okay for the boss to hand off, but if she ever shows the slightest squeamishness, Alex knows she’s toast. More than that, Kara is toast, and Lucy, and Brainy, and Winn, and everyone else under her protection.

 

So, she makes the shot, and makes sure both his and Lockwood’s bodies burn deep into the night, until only ash is left behind. 

 

“Don’t worry,” Lucy murmurs, as they make their way away from the site of the impromptu cremation. “No one’s gonna be looking around here, unless we lead them to it. Even if someone comes around sniffing, I’ve got a fall guy hired.”

 

Alex nods, and they make their way to their pre-dawn meeting with the Luthors. It’s business as usual, then, conducted with legalities stamped on as fine a paper as any Wall Street contract, and as bloody.

 

And now she’s here, in yet another motel room, alone. She wants to call Kara, itches to hear her sister’s voice again, but Kara never answers her calls anymore, not after she found out about Mon-El. Alex sighs, turning over the unfamiliar pillows, and trying to sleep again.

 

She’s fifteen minutes into a fitful half-sleep, when the phone buzzes. She’s up like a shot, one hand creeping for her gun, while the other snatches up the phone.

 

A quick look at the phone shows Astra’s number, so Alex opens the message with embarrassing haste.

 

Only to turn it back off almost immediately, thumb trembling over the power button. 

 

Another second, a deep breath, and she turns it back on, to look once more at the photo that Astra had sent, along with a simple accompanying text.

 

_ I bought this last week. What do you think? _

 

Below that, a photo from the waist up, of Astra’s body encased in sheer black lingerie that has Alex biting her lip so hard that she almost draws blood. Just miles of filigree lace over sharp ridges and valleys of skin, marked by faded scars that had fascinated Alex so much during their night together. Alex stares longer than she would admit to, devouring the image, before taking a deep breath and fumbling the phone back to sleep again.

 

The phone is tossed onto the bed, only for Alex to dive for it again a few minutes later. She stares intensely at the blank screen for some moments, before dialing.

 

Astra answers almost immediately, as if she’d been waiting.

 

“Hey,” Alex says, her voice hoarse.

 

“Alex?” Despite the immediate answer, Astra sounds surprised.

 

“I know what I said about us not doing this,” Alex says, and bites her lip, exhaling another puff of breath. “I got... I got what you sent.”

 

“Obviously.” Astra’s answer is heavy with sleep, but she still manages to sound amused by the effect she’s had on Alex.

 

“Right,” Alex murmurs, flushing. 

 

Her entire body feels hot, and there’s a tightness in her chest. She pauses again, frustrated that she doesn’t know how to proceed. Should she say something sexy? What counts as sexy, when it comes to women? She should have looked this up. What the fuck is the point of mandatory sex ed in high-school if they don’t teach you this?

 

“Alex, are you there?”

 

“I miss you,” she confesses, finally.

 

There is silence from the other end, making Alex’s heart sink deeper with every second. This is such a mistake. She barely knows Astra.  _ Why _ had she ever thought this was a good idea?

 

“I miss you as well,” Astra says, when she speaks again.

 

Her voice is low, but intense, and Alex feels like she’s flying, leaping over clouds, invincible.  _ Astra misses her.  _ She cradles the phone tighter in her hands, and somehow it makes the shooting and the burned bodies seem far away.

 

“Alex?”

 

“Hmm?”.

 

“Come back.”

 

Alex smiles.

 

“Soon.”

 

“I’ll be waiting, brave one.” There’s a playful inflection to the epithet, and Alex can almost see Astra’s lips quirking up into a smile.

 

“Ok,” she says quietly, into the phone.

 

Astra hums in acknowledgement, before silence falls over them again.

 

“Alex?” Astra’s voice comes over the line, some moments later. “Are you there?”

 

Alex sucks her bottom lip in, again unsure how to proceed. There really needs to be a handbook for this, damn. On the other hand, she doesn’t need a handbook to know what a bad idea this is. Every second she stays on the phone is another second it could be set up for a trace. Someone could track her. Someone could track Astra. 

 

And yet, this far away, with no assurance of seeing her again, Alex lets herself be selfish.

 

“Can you just, stay on the line for now?”

 

A soft inhale of breath, and then Astra’s voice says, “Alright.”

 

Alex smiles, though she knows the woman can’t see it, and settles back against the pillows, drawing her blankets up. 

 

“I’m making my way through a book,” Astra continues. “ _ Anne of Green Gables.  _ Would you like me to read aloud to you?”

 

“Ok.” Alex shifts the covers around her and checks the gun by her bedside, before cradling the phone with both hands, staring at light emanating from the display as if she can see Astra in it.

 

“It was not until the next Friday that Marilla heard the story of the flower-wreathed hat,” Astra begins, in the low voice she’d used when they’d cuddled together in bed after sex.

 

Alex falls asleep to the sound of that voice narrating Anne’s imaginary adventures in the Whispering Woods, and over the Lake of Shining Waters.

 

\---

 

Alex ditches the burner phone before she crosses back into National City, and doesn’t bother texting Astra to let her know that she’s back. It’s a quick ride to her headquarters, and an even quicker meeting to regroup with those her crew that had stayed behind to supervise the local operations. By nightfall, she’s back on her bike and headed to Astra’s, speeding through the pavement at a steady pace that matches the excited beating of her heart.

 

It’s almost midnight by the time she’s knocking on the familiar apartment door, for it to be opened by a grumpy-looking Astra who has clearly been woken up mid-sleep.

 

“Alex,” she murmurs drowsily, before her eyes fly open.

 

Then strong hands are drawing Alex in, and Astra is crushing her against her chest, humming tunelessly with pleasure.

 

“Hey,” Alex murmurs, running wandering fingers through strands of sleep-matted hair. 

 

She steers them towards the bedroom amidst chaste kisses to Astra’s cheeks and forehead. Astra simply keeps making that contented sound, still seemingly caught between sleep and wakefulness.

 

Hours later, they’re still tangled together in bed, and Astra is humming again, and the wordless song goes right through Alex, warming up parts of her that she hadn’t known existed.

 

“I’ve missed you.” Astra whispers the words in sleep-hoarse tones, in between hums.

 

“Missed you too,” Alex murmurs back, before dozing off to sleep, feeling safer in her arms than she’d felt in the motel room surrounded by her dozen armed men.

 

\---

 

She wakes up before Astra the next morning, reaching up to close the half-open curtain before the sunlight streaming through wakes up the other woman. When she shakes off the blankets and prepares to leave the bed, hands like steel clamp around her body.

  
“No,” Astra grumbles, her eyes still closed, and her breathing deep.

 

Alex shakes off the grip with a little more struggle, smiling as Astra’s arms drop back onto the sheets like a sack of stone, the woman herself still asleep.

 

Alex is dressed up, and flicking through the TV channels in the living room disinterestedly, by the time she hears the sounds of movement from the bedroom. Hearing the shower being run, she channels surfs aimlessly until she lands on an old sitcom rerun, and is halfway through the episode, by the time Astra strolls into the living room, running lethargic fingers through her newly wet hair.

 

“Golden Girls?” she murmurs, shifting Alex’s position on the couch to hold her from behind. “I wouldn’t have thought it was your type.”

 

“Golden Girls is everyone’s type,” Alex replies, turning to press a light kiss against her cheek, though tendrils of wet hair get in the way. “I ordered us some food.”

 

“That is too bad,” Astra says, surveying her through half-lidded eyes that either mean she’s still sleep or... something else. “I was going to cook you something.”

 

Alex stares at her.

 

“Oh,” she says, her voice very small.

 

Astra surveys her, and whatever she sees seems to make her eyes go all crinkly and soft again.

 

“Let me make up the loss with something else,” she says, and disappears into the small kitchenette.

 

Some minutes later, Alex puts down the remote and tiptoes after her, catching Astra around the waist from behind, while the woman is juicing some oranges.

 

“Take out the pulp please,” she says, whispering the words against Astra’s neck, and feeling strangely excited by how that makes Astra’s jaw work. Weird, the things she finds sexy when it involves this woman.

 

Astra nods. After she’s passed a glass of fresh juice to Alex, who wolfs it down, she speaks.

 

“Where were you?”

 

Alex looks down into the glass, avoiding her gaze again.

 

“Just... out of town. Had some business to take care of.”

 

“What sort of business?”

 

“Don’t worry about it babe.” Alex presses a kiss to Astra’s temples in an attempt to distract her, ignoring again the misgivings in her heart about this being a very bad, no good, idea.

 

(She’s right.)

 

\---

**Author's Note:**

> don’t drink and write kids


End file.
